Pro Patronum Perpurgo
by blinkblink
Summary: To Clean for One's Country . Hellsing: The Dawn-verse. In the dying days of Sir Arthur's regime, Walter cleans the dungeons and discusses the future with their permanent resident.


Disclaimer: Don't own Hellsing: The Dawn, or the characters.

Notes: This is set in about 1960; Walter's about 30. Assumes Sir Arthur is Integra's grandfather, and father to a son of the same name.

The dungeons are cleaned infrequently these days.

Two decades ago in the dying days of permanent domestic staff, it had been cleaned monthly by a detail of whichever footmen had been particularly slothful in the preceding weeks. But, as with so many other things, that changed after the war. Hellsing nearly buckled under the hard financial times of a country which had achieved victory in name alone, and all non-essential – non military – personnel were let go. The East Wing of the mansion was closed entirely, dust and cobwebs allowed to creep into rooms in which shrouded furniture sat like tombs in the darkness, and half the rooms in the West Wing followed suit as the heating and electricity prices rose. The luxurious banquets, the equerries in bright serge, the silver cutlery and tea services were all cut from Hellsing's routine in the post-war regime of austerity.

These days it is only Walter who gives what rooms remain open in the mansion their cleaning – when he is not on missions or guarding his master – and although even alone he is a formidable force, he cannot do everything. Consequently, the dungeons rarely receive his attention. And after all, even if they were not out of the way and as such unlikely to be seen by anyone apart from himself and their sole permanent resident, dungeons are not supposed to be tidy. Sparkling floors and shining walls are not expected, nor are gleaming steel hinges and polished iron manacles. Dirt, dust and even rust are both expected and desired.

Thus it's rare that he makes it downstairs to clean more than once or twice a year, armed with mops and brooms and buckets of water and highly corrosive chemical cleaners. Alucard generally makes himself scarce.

This year though, with Sir Arthur's failing health and his young son's need for assistance, Walter leaves the cleaning for months longer than usual. When he finally troops down to the dungeons it's with only half the supplies he usually brings, and his manner is hurried and his cleaning cursory.

Alucard sits languidly in his high-backed chair, long legs outstretched and booted feet propped up on the table, watching the butler from behind his tinted glasses. Walter doesn't have to see his eyes to feel the burn of his gaze – doesn't even have to be facing him to know it. He wouldn't be a trash man if he couldn't sense the attention of the undead – or at least not a live one. Walter doesn't bother to speak to the room's sole occupant – if the vampire has something to say, he'll spit it out in his own damn time. It's the only way he does anything, after all.

The gutters in the dungeon are clogged, as usual, by a year's worth of dirt and dust and the occasional skeletal mouse. He jams the poker brought down for just this purpose between the gratings until the way is free, spiders and silverfish fleeing before his weapon, and then begins to mop.

"He's looking worse by the day," says Alucard when he's done half the room, without bothering to specify. They both know well enough who he's speaking of. Vampires keep very few people in their minds – only those they respect or those they are bound to, and such people are much rarer than blue moons.

Walter doesn't bother to reply; it's a fact, not a question.

"The boy doesn't trust me. Doesn't think he needs me," he continues contemplatively, staring at the ceiling from beneath the wide brim of his hat. "Doesn't want to taint his soul by employing what he hunts. That the rare bloom of idealism has managed to flower in this dank cave of realism is truly miraculous. How has he managed to keep his morals so nice and clean this long? A Hellsing, afraid of getting his hands dirty!" Alucard laughs long and loud, until the stones ring with it. Walter dunks the mop in the bucket, swirls it around until the water turns dark, and then pulls it out again.

"Of course," adds the vampire, suddenly serious, "you know what this means." Now, at last, he's stopped with the preamble. His tone is the usual patronising drawl – _if you don't know, you don't deserve to breathe. _

He does. He's seen it coming for years, seen it in the twist of young Arthur's lip when Alucard reports to his father, seen it in his refusal to consider strategies which employ Hellsing's most formidable weapon, seen it in his arguments with his father. _For what price are you selling all our souls?_ The young Arthur is, just as Alucard has said, an idealist. _Dulce et decorum est_, and all that rubbish. _Better a few men die than we sully our honour – we must keep ourselves and our integrity at any price._ It isn't weakness, it's mulish stubbornness.

Walter has seen enough to know that the strength and success of Hellsing isn't in purity. But young Arthur hasn't lived through two world wars like his father, or fields of slaughter, like Walter.

The trash man glances up, eyebrows carefully raised. "It means I won't have to continue running missions with a git whose opening ploy is to redecorate whatever room he's in his own blood?" he asks obtusely, washing around the coffin's base.

"Better than that. No more triplicate forms from the blood bank."

"That is better," agrees Walter with an easy smile. "They're a bloody nuisance, take hours." He doesn't bother to instil surprise in his tone.

"So you already know."

The butler shrugs. "It's never been in his nature. But since Sir Arthur took ill, the young master's been looking in the old books – and not bothering to return them, either, lazy little prat. Sealing rituals," he adds, as if an afterthought.

Alucard smiles, the dim light catching his sharp teeth. It has nothing to do with pleasure. Walter finishes with the brief mopping, really just a rearrangement of the dirt, swills the dirty water into the gutters where it gurgles like a man drowning in his own blood. He returns the mop to the supplies, and gets out the polish to begin on the chains.

"If done properly, they have the power to last eternally," says Alucard conversationally after a minute, no apparent change in his tone.

"The young master is pretty damn thorough. But not so far-sighted."

"Maybe you'll be a wrinkled old man by the time he realises his mistake," returns the vampire. "Maybe," he continues, grinning in earnest now, "you'll be six feet under."

Walter keeps his usual smile, mostly out of habit, and stabs back as deeply as he can in a pleasant tone. "And you're supposed to envy death." Alucard throws back his head and laughs, exposing a long white neck.

"Am I? Who told you that?" Alucard has had centuries to perfect his acting. Walter doesn't bother to try to read him. Doesn't have to; he knows when blows have landed, regardless of his opponent's posture.

Walter gives a tiny, sharp smile like the tip of a blade. Alucard shrugs grandly and turns sharply back to the original vein. They're like a pair of snakes, each trying to chase the other off its soft spot. Ridiculous. "And if not, you'll still be a servant, cleaning the dirt from a vampire's tomb?" Alucard asks, without malice. He's far too old and intelligent to throw stones. He's also far too cold-blooded to feel any sort of actual interest in this; employment prospects are no vampire's concern. Irritated by the vampire's feints and games, he ignores them.

"It's preferable to being that vampire."

"Is it?" asks Alucard easily, still staring at the ceiling. His tone carries absolutely no apparent weight, but he says nothing without a reason – he's long ago fallen into the habit of thinking several steps ahead of conversations, the butler knows. Walter, in the middle of polishing the chain links anchoring a manacle to the wall, straightens.

The idea is no new one – isn't new to even the greenest of Hellsing's rookies. Even Alucard himself is in the habit of throwing it out now and then, mostly to watch people squirm. Walter himself hasn't given it a second thought since he began his weapons training.

The offer, though, is completely unexpected. He cants his head to the side and gives a predatory grin.

"Why Alucard. Making me an offer? I'm not your type."

"Really?" drawls the vampire.

"I think you'll have to look a bit farther to find a full-bodiced sultry young virgin."

"I've always thought you looked well in a vest," says Alucard, tilting his head so that his glasses tip down on his sharp nose. He looks at Walter suggestively over the top of them. Walter rolls his eyes.

"Hellsing doesn't need more secrets in its basement. You're more than enough trouble. Besides, those teeth." He turns up his lips in disgust.

Alucard raises a dark brow. "You don't like them? They're very popular." He gives a wide toothy smile to better display the razor-sharp whites.

"But hardly practical with my methods." Walter slips the cloth through the manacle, gives a tug to his glove, and spins the wires free of their slim spools. He flicks them through the air towards the pile of cleaning supplies, catching the metal threads easily with his free hand and stringing them through his fingers like a cat's cradle. Pulls them up to his mouth, and uses his teeth as a further control to manipulate them around the bottle of cleaning solution and then whip it across the room towards him. He drops the wires to catch the container and then lets them slip slowly from his fingers, pushing the wires out with his tongue, cat-like. "I prefer to kill from a distance. The stains you accrue are beyond filthy."

Alucard sweeps his gloved hands wide in a gesture of acceptance, and lets the matter drop. It is the one choice he has always respected. He nudges his glasses up again, and then weaves his fingers together.

"And after all," he says, with false sentimentality, "you won't miss me. Weapons mean nothing to each other. It's only their master's hand that they care for."

Walter finishes his polishing and walks back to gather his supplies; there are more rooms down here still to clean. "Don't pussy-foot. As a weapon, you're indispensible to Hellsing. The young master doesn't see it, but he will. And if not him, his heirs. No need to appeal for sympathy; you'll be back, Alucard." Alucard is like this mansion, capable of being closed away and shrouded and forgotten. And then one day, when the resources and the necessity exist, all it will take is a whip of the sheet and like the East Wing he'll be there, ready and waiting.

"Yes," agrees the vampire laconically. "_I_ will be."

Walter gives him a long look; the vampire returns it impassively from behind his golden glasses. "Then perhaps I'll see you then. But after all," he adds as he turns in the doorway, buckets and mops in his hands, "you won't miss me either."

He bows himself out of the room facetiously, a jackal's smile on his face. Alucard's slow laughter follows him down the corridor like the tolling of a mourning bell; Walter wonders which of them it's for.


End file.
